Before the Marvel Age of Comics kicked in for real in the Silver Age, there were a few precursors. For instance, a number of cowboy heroes who were, essentially, the templates for Marvel’s costumed heroes. Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Kid Colt #1 awaits!
KID COLT #1
Writer: Ernie Hart
Penciler: Bill Walsh
Inker: Chu F. Hing
Colorist: Uncredited
Letterer: Uncredited
Editor: Stan Lee
Publisher: Leading Comics Corp. (Marvel Comics)
Cover Price: 10 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $2000.00
Release Date: June 25, 1948
Previously in Kid Colt: Though omnipresent in the years leading up to and through World War II, superhero comics started to wane in popularity after 1945 or so. Even the mighty Justice Society fell prey to the changing times, with other genres of comic books replacing the supers on the stands. Simon and Kirby created romance comics in 1947, while Dell Comics put everything on adaptations of movies, cartoons, and TV properties. Westerns had been around since the dawn of comics (both Action Comics #1 and Marvel Comics #1 featured cowboy tales of Chuck Dawson and The Masked Raider, respectively), but as the fifties drew nearer, the gunslingers began to multiply.
This is the story of Blaine Colt.
Having grown up on his father’s Box C ranch, Blaine Colt refused to wear a gun. But when the corrupt deputies of the town of Purgatory beat up elderly ranch hand Gabby, Blaine takes the law into his own fists. Even with his clear desire to do the right thing, Blaine’s old man is disappointed that he won’t shoot down his enemies like an honest man would. (For some values of honest man, Western comic book style, anyway.) Despite his father’s taunts, young Master Colt isn’t afraid to wear a gun.
He’s just being properly cautious due to his ability to shoot the fleas off a running dog at fifty paces.
When Papa Colt turns up murdered, the Sherriff of Purgatory comes gunning for Blaine, shooting poor Gabby down and taking the Colt kid into custody, claiming that the late Pops Colt even lost the farm to the Sherriff in a poker game the night before. The whole situation stinks to the proverbial high heavens, but fortunately, the sheriff isn’t as crack a shot as Blaine, allowing Gabby to bust the lad out of the hoosegow to find the truth.
This issue’s artist, Bill Walsh, isn’t a common name in the annals of comics, mostly working in Disney’s animated adaptations and in the pages of Classics Illustrated. It’s actually something that I can kind of see in these pages, as his figure work is a little bit stiff and the cowboy hats a little bit larger than you would expect, as though he just finished drawing musketeers and still hadn’t quite changed the proportions yet. His facial expressions are remarkably versatile, though, and when Blaine finally decides to put on Daddy’s six-shooter and avenge his old man, it’s a powerful visual moment.
Evil deputy Lash Lassiter doesn’t take the death of his boss lightly, striking Blaine right in the face and trying to shoot him down, but Kid Colt doesn’t even need both eyes to disarm a scheming idiot with a bullwhip.
The cover of this issue bears the logo Kid Colt, Hero of the West, but the official indicia title is plain ol’ Kid Colt. By issue #3, the book will have a Kid Colt, Outlaw cover logo, with an official name change in issue #4. But Kid Colt #1 is an interesting start for a series that would run for the next thirty years, and while it’s not necessarily a thunderbolt, it is interesting to see the seeds of The Hulk’s antihero status or Spider-Man’s tense interactions with the NYPD in Kid Colt’s adventures, wrapping up to 3 out of 5 stars overall. As someone who has recently been delving into Marvel’s cowboy books with a vengeance, this one is the gold standard, the book that launched a veritable army of various Marvel cowboy kids, including Kid Cassidy, Kid Clayton, The Two-Gun Kid, The Western Kid, The Texas Kid, The Outlaw Kid, The Black Rider, The Black Raider, and Kid Flash.
Okay, well, maybe not that last one.
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